Mighty Video Update: Summer Development Soldiers On!

It’s been a wild month in the gaming industry, and with post-E3 game announcements piling up July is looking to get even wilder! Staff at comcept and Inti Creates are burning the midnight oil to keep up the breakneck pace of our development schedule. Today we have a few fruits of our labors to cap off Mighty June!

MORE GAMEPLAY FOOTAGE

We released some much-requested gameplay footage in last month’s update, and as expected this only made you guys hungry for more! We aim to please here on the Mighty team, so if it’s more you want, more is exactly what you’re going to get! We have more choice bits of Mighty No. 2 and 5’s stages for you to feast your eyes on, including the first implementation of the winning stage start phrase!

We love seeing these levels come together, but we love seeing you guys tweet and comment about our progress even more! Can’t wait to see what you think of this one!

ALL ABOUT CALL

We had a lot of exciting moments during our Kickstarter campaign, but few measured up to the pure levels of hype that arose from our plucky heroine Call rising to playable character status in the stretch goals!

We’ve shown you brief glimpses here and there, but we’ll still need a little time to show you exactly what we have in store for her. In the meantime, we’ve been given few goodies from Inti Creates to sate your curiosity!

First, this little vignette from Inti Creates designer Yuji Natsume:

Introducing Call’s new look! Can you spot the differences?

Next, let’s sneak a peek into Inti Creates’ top-secret animation studios for an exclusive look at her in-game model!

Unlike Beck, our intrepid heroine can’t perform a crouching dash, so she’ll have to resort to this crawl maneuver to get out of tight spots! Or maybe into them? Maybe she could use this move to navigate cramped spaces, like ventilation shafts and such? Just one example of potential gameplay differences between our two playable characters!

Call runs straight at danger, not away from it! The animators have done a great job of giving her movements that share Beck’s determination, while still showcasing how different she is from him. Call wasn’t built for combat, but she will do whatever needs to be done to help Beck!

By the way… did you notice that light-pink object on her back? I wonder what that could be...? ;)

Of course these animations are still rough and most definitely works-in-progress, but what do you think? We’d love to hear our Mighty community’s feedback!

ANIME EXPO ANNOUNCEMENT

Hear ye, hear ye! Keiji Inafune will be at this year’sAnime Expo in Los Angeles! The event is held July 3rd to 6th. INAFKING will hold a panel there, and we strongly suggest you try attending it. You never know--maybe he’ll even happen to have something mighty interesting to share…?

Well, that’s it for today, Beckers! We’re excited about the way this summer is shaping up, and with all of these events coming up can’t wait for a chance to meet you and hear your excitement in person! :) But first, why not tell us here in the comments, on Twitter, Facebook or the Mighty No. 9 forums?

P.S. Speaking of the forums, allow me to plug our first Community Activity: Mighty Horoscope! It’s an art- and writing-shindig we’re doing for fun on the Becker Forums! Why not join the fun? KIMO KIMO did! ;)

COMMUNITY FOLLOW-UP

Now here is a game we can pretty much guarantee every Becker will “dig”: The excellent Shovel Knight has finally hit the digital download shelves to troves of criticalacclaim! Are you ready for some action/adventure…action?

Shovel Knight’s beginnings, much like Mighty No. 9’s, lie in a love for the games of yesteryear, aided by a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign. (In fact, developer Yacht Club Games was kind enough to give us tons of great advice and encouragement when we were working on our Kickstarter!)

Just check out this sweet release trailer (note: crank the volume for that epic soundtrack)!

Right? RIGHT?!

And now for a word from the Yacht Club Games guys themselves:

Greetings to all backers of Mighty No. 9, from Yacht Club Games! For more than a year after our own successful Kickstarter, we’ve been hard at work on our game Shovel Knight, and now it’s finally available! If you haven’t heard of it, Shovel Knight is a love letter to the NES games of our youth, infused with everything we’ve learned about game design since then (not to mention guest compositions by Mighty No. 9’s own Manami Matsumae!).
We love everything about the Mighty No. 9 project, so we’re going to do something special. Exclusively for Mighty Beckers, we now reveal a secret code for Shovel Knight! Just enter this at the name entry screen to activate it:

As lifelong fans of Mega Man and the brilliant minds behind it, we attempted to bring some of that magic to Shovel Knight. Please enjoy it on PC, Wii U, or 3DS; maybe it will temporarily relieve the dull pain of having to wait for Mighty No. 9!

-Yacht Club Games

Shovel Knight is available as a digital download on Wii U/3Ds eShop, Humble Store, and Steam. In fact, here’s a few codes from the team at Yacht Club that a few lucky Beckers can use to download the game right now (NA eStore only right now, sorry!)! (First come, first served! ;)

And remember to replace any and all “?” with the Mightiest of Numbers! ;)

My access is being denied for the Shovel Knights code, and I'm not certain how to set up a log-in. Any tips? (I haven't really been keeping up with the updates so this might be buried somewhere in my inbox)

I hope that we can play as Call without the patch backpack too. For now i doubt that we'll have only one stage to play as call. This won't be reasonable for all the work that's being done to make her playable.

I really like the shoot-shoot-dash combo mechanic - it looks like it adds a lot of momentum to the player's movement through the level. *really* looking forward to playing this - shovel night was sweet but oh so short.

The overall design looks nice, the comic was entertaining, and I like how the support character seems to be integrated into her new design. Even so, I can't help but wonder, are her fists the same size as her torso?
The running animation looks a bit off to me as well. She looks like she is running while waving her arms out from her sides, away from her torso horizontally. I personally just find it looks a bit odd since I have never seen someone run like that before (unless they were trying to be humorous). Whenever I see someone running (myself included), they always seem to wave their arms out from their torso in a vertical "pumping" motion.

I understand this is a rough work-in-progress, and overall the animations do convey a nice flow of motion. However, with the size of her fists combined with the motion of her arms the first thought that entered into my head upon seeing her running animation was that of a small, candy-striped gorilla. Honestly, even I am not entirely sure why that is, but now I can't unsee it. ~.~;;

Yes, I know the game's early in development, but I'm not seeing a lot of meaningful choice when it comes to dashing. A lot of the enemy arrangements and hazards show only one optimal way of getting through and that's by dashing and dashing in one specific direction or fashion. Albiet, I'm sure that for the purposes of demonstrating it's uses, things are being displayed in a simple, introductory manner so we can understand even if we only watch the video. But I want to see some more creative and advanced uses of the dash mechanic!

Oh, one more thing; Call's ribbon is shorter (especially consider that her originals were practically rabbit ears). I guess you could also include the backpack-like apparatus a change.
P.S. I noticed that Call is very expressive when her ribbon is in the frame. Not so much when she has it off (such as in front of the mirror), but she still shows a *little* of emotion. Overall a nice touch.

Indeed the first Wii U code is missing an A at the beginning of it...
Sorry for the mistake!
Still have some more codes to give away on the forums and Twitter, those more participation based, so keep those eyes peeled.

It's very subtle, but the newer Call design brings a number of new things. For those that can't tell (I don't blame you; they are REALLY subtle) she has:
-A mic
-Different-style headset patterns (Shaped like a "C")
-More pronounced jacket shoulders
-A different, bigger collar
-no little ribbon on her shirt
-sleeves that slightly expand before the cuffs
-SLIGHTLY changed shoes (the line between the red and the pink is a bit curvier)
And last (that I felt was most important)...
-Her skirt flares out a lot less, exposing less of her "upper thighs."
I would like to point out that several changes (the mic, little extra fabric on the shoulders, changing sleeve size and skirt) bring her closer to Call E's design. Especially the skirt. Ignoring the difference in body type (mainly E's ..."emphasized"... rear), they are identical in shape. While it isn't much, you really can't state that they aren't listening to us "Call E" fans. Of course, we'd still love to actually have "Echo" in the game, but... this will do.

Dude, did you REALLY grab four codes all for yourself? :/ That's not very Mighty.

@Joseph -- Ahh, I saw that but I was too caught up looking for tiny things like the slightly different scheme of the headphone 'ears' themselves to click to that! xD :D Her itty bitty bow from her top is gone, too.

:0c And it looks like the cuffs of her shirt are different, too? Used to be fairly tapered but now they're quite straight-edged.

I also thought her flailing arms looked a bit odd :/ And now that it's been pointed out its so true about it being a style mostly reserved for female characters.

Hrm... Call me overly sensitive, but does she have to have that exaggerated, arms-flailing running posture? Can't say as I've ever seen anyone in real life run that way, but in video games and cartoons -- at least Japanese ones -- it's uncomfortably common of female characters (Final Fantasy X/X-2's Yuna immediately comes to mind for me, though TV Tropes could flesh out the *ahem* roll call more fully).